Restitution
by Aurora-cs
Summary: How can he keep going as though the Time War never happened? The stars taunt him and sleep is elusive, but sometimes the answer is there, you just need help finding it from the person you think could never understand. 9th Doctor and Rose.


**Disclaimer:** Doctor Who belongs to the BBC - I have a Doctor Who desktop background though.  
**Authors notes:** Wow...I've not been this surprised by something I've written since 'Resolution', and this kept taunting me while I was revising for my Victorian Britain exam next week, so as soon as I finished for the night, I just had to write this. Watched the 'movie' with Paul McGann last night - liked the bit where Sylvester McCoy was trying to stop them operating on him, but not sure about the 'half human on my mother's side' or the fact he **kissed** her. The part about Gallifrey is my own idea, and is just that - an idea - so please don't have a go at me.  
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On an important note, **please** read the note in my profile because something is annoying me about the series and I'm hoping someone can explain it.  
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**Restitution**

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It's another day, and another near death experience, with Rose shouting at him for being so stupid to get them into this mess, and then grinning at him as they get out of it. Back to the TARDIS, he fishes out the key and opens the door. Rose chats to him for a few minutes, then declares she needs to get changed, get something to eat and just wait for the next disaster.

He grins back, watching her disappear through a door and turns back to the console, preparing to set their next course.

Then it hits him.

Why does he still do this.

The routine is so familiar by now, all he needs to do is switch the companion and their responses, adjust a little for that regeneration, and it's exactly the same. He's sure that, should he sit down and try it, there would be a scientific formula for his life. Doctor (_one_) + Companion (_add number as appropriate_) x regeneration (_add number_) + TARDIS Trouble with a capital T. It's all too familiar, and he enjoys it, but why is he still doing it?

Wasn't the destruction of his entire planet, the entire history of his people, the end result that he is the last Time Lord enough to convince him that how he lives his life just brings chaos and destruction. It was fine in the beginning, when he could go back any time he wanted, and be able to see his people. Except, back then, you didn't want to, did you. You've spent all these lives running away from your home, because you could never fit in with what they thought you should be, and now, when you want to run back, you can't, because the only memories that exist throughout time are in your head, and the only tangible remains are your body, the TARDIS, and what it contains.

The last surviving Time Lord, and you're not even acting like one.

In mid-thought, he changes the course with co-ordinates that are so familiar by now. There's no need to set the time, it doesn't matter, there won't be any planet to step out onto, just an empty space where a planet used to be, but the same stars in the sky that beckon with bitter irony.

You did this.

It's your fault.

You should have died with them.

He opens the view screen, and watches the stars. Then, suddenly, he can't hold it in any longer and collapses to his knees, squeezes his eyes shut and feels the tears trickle down his face, not attempting to wipe them away. Opening his eyes as if Gallifrey will be there, but knowing that it won't, and feeling a fresh wave of hot tears as he just sees the same pattern of stars blinking back at him again, mocking him, condemning him.

"Doctor?" Rose enters the room, but her voice comes to him as if far away "Have we stopped already, I thought..." he hears her stop, breath in sharply "Doctor?" She must not be wearing any shoes, because her feet just pad softly on the floor. A feeling of air passing, and then she's kneeling beside him "Doctor?"

He doesn't move.

"I killed them...and I just keep going like before..."

Rose doesn't say anything for a moment. Perhaps she's trying to understand what he means, because she calls him cryptic and confusing, or perhaps she just doesn't know how to respond. After all, when you travel in a time machine and can go back to your planet whenever you wish, step on the solid ground of the earth, swim in the clear blue oceans and sit on a pier eating chips, then how can you understand a person who has had that all taken away? Any chance, any opportunity you could have doesn't exist and has never existed. You have a head full of memories and feelings of and for people who have never existed, for a home you can remember growing up on and leaving, but was never real, only inside your head.

Then she opens her arms, and offers him comfort. And he takes it, because there's nothing else he can do, and nothing he needs more, but she can't ever take away that feeling of emptiness, or the gnawing guilt that stops him from sleeping peacefully and what sleep he does get torturing him with nightmares of the people that only exist as memories, blaming him for their erasure from existence.

He looks up at her, and she can see his eyes are pleading with her for the solution that she cannot give him, but for the reassurance that she can.

"You've got to stop blaming yourself"

How can he? He's left not only as the destroyer but the soul survivor.

"Did you plan to be the last one?" she asks him softly, and he pulls away.

"I had to be…in case it failed"

"Did you want it to turn out this way?"

"No..." he chokes out "It had to happen...but I...I didn't want it to"

"You did it because it had to happen, because you knew it would. You taught me that sometimes, things have to go one way, even if you wish they could go the other"

Right now, he is the ignorant ape, and she holds all the secrets of the universe. Because with words spoken in less than half a minute, she has started to dissolve the pain he has felt for so many years.

"...but I still keep going..." he swallows, tears still trailing down his face, and she moves to brush them aside, noting the red rimmed eyes and weary lines that mark the face that is usually smiling or looking chagrined "It's all gone, and I keep going like it never happened...I'm the last of my people and I don't even act like they did..."

"Isn't about acting like they think you should, it's staying true to yourself" she murmurs softly "You're only a Time Lord when you're acting like you always do, otherwise you're just pretending" she lifts his head up again, making him stare at her. Her eyes are so clear, so pure that it holds him transfixed "You want to honour their memories, then just be yourself, cause that's how they remembered you, how they knew you, and pretending otherwise is an insult"

Can it be that simple? Can the answer he's been searching for have been staring him in the face for all that time, those countless years that stretch into centuries, all those nights in the TARDIS when he was alone with nobody to talk to, and those times coming here to stare at a point in space where his planet once stood...could it be that simple? Has all this time just been an excuse to blame himself, because being the only survivor, felt he had to wallow in guilt for all those people that never lived, but who still do inside his head? Is it just a question of feeling he has to blame himself, because he is the only one left to blame?

Rose watches him, then gently pulls him upwards.

"Sleep" he expects her to order it, but she just smiles softly and helps him stand. All the energy he had has been drained and leaves him grasping at her arm for support as they walk down the corridor, with his mind absently noting each door, each corridor as they pass; how other companions used to walk them, and how he used to as well, in other lives, other bodies, not knowing what was going to happen despite having the control of time at their fingertips.

His room is warmer than he remembers from the cold that enveloped him whenever he was too exhausted to stand and had no choice but to rest, the cold that clung to him and dug deep as he dreamt of horrors that gave him only enough strength to carry on until the next collapse, and the cycle began anew. But now the room feels warmer, could it be because the feeling of despair that constantly shrouded him has begun to drop, prompted by the simple words of a young human girl that he owes more than she can ever know? Was the warmth there all the time, but simply hidden?

As he sits on the side, she speaks softly to him, helping as he removes his clothes and she moves to get some pyjamas from the dresser. Black as night, with silver stars, they used to fill him with a nauseated feeling as they taunted him in the same way as the real stars, but now they comfort him. Such a change, like the warmth replacing the cold, now the stars that taunted him with his loss, seem to reassure him that though the loss still exists, at least he remembers what had once been. Changed, she then helps him slip beneath the covers, and smiles as his head sinks into the soft pillows that at one time, felt as hard as rock. Then she pulls the covers up and pulls up a chair, and he doesn't say anything, because he is still afraid the nightmares will come, that he will wake suddenly to feel the cold return, the pillow to be solid and the stars to taunt him, a scream tear from his lips and that he will need her there.

But if it doesn't, he needs her there, to remind him why he has slept peacefully for the first time in longer than he can recall.

And if it doesn't, then he wants to do something that he has never felt strong enough to do. To write down what he remembers, perhaps never for another to view, but to serve as a memorial for the time when there will be no Time Lords, so that they will never die.

With her watching him, he feels his body sink into the bed and a smile trace his lips, and sighing softly, closes his eyes and falls into a peaceful slumber. He will sleep for days, all the rest he has never been able to have since the time wars catching up to him. He wakes at intermittent periods to find Rose there with a mug of chocolate, a cup of water or a damp cloth. As she brushes his face with it, he realises he must have a fever, from all the lost sleep, guilt and grieving that has also caught up with him, and it feels so tender, so relieving that he falls back into slumber with a smile on his face. Sometimes, when he wakes, they talk, just about silly little things that have no connection to a greater purpose, and he will fall asleep in the middle, sometimes she just holds his hand and they don't say anything, sometimes he feels the need to stand up and stretch, quickly falling back as the weariness returns. But one thing is always there.

Rose.

And there are no nightmares.


End file.
